When you're a play-off bubble team whose top lines can't quite compete with opposing teams, you rely on catching a few breaks in order to qualify for the post-season. If instead your team loses 5.5 points on the random OT/shoot-out chance, and are among the league leaders in man-games lost to injury, then you need to build a far better team to be playing hockey in mid-April.

Here's the current status of the race, according to three separate sites each using slightly different statistical models. Phoenix and Los Angeles are practically in, with San Jose and Dallas in a dead heat for that final spot.

22.8% of Calgary's on-ice attempted shots result in scoring chances with David Moss on the ice, compared with 37.0% with Alex Tanguay. It would be an interesting study to determine if this difference is persistent from season to season.

Lee Stempniak had a solid season, and could arguably be a top-six forward on some of the league's weaker teams. On Calgary he's a useful and low-cost utility forward – let's see what kind of contract he'll get July 1st.

With the return to something resembling full health there were mot a lot of opportunities for depth talent this week – only Tim Jackman and Tom Kostopoulos saw action, which they performed in their usual adequate form, save for the Colorado game where, joined by Blair Jones, they were easily Calgary's top line.

The Flames simply won't score with Jay Bouwmeester on the ice. They get the shots, they get the chances, but do not get the goals. If only the team scored as easily with Bouwmeester on the ice (3.8% of attempted shots, 12.5% of scoring chances) as opponents do with Scott Hannan on the ice (5.3% of attempted shots, 16.9% of scoring chances).

If Olli Jokinen is going to retain his team power play scoring rate crown for yet another season, he's going to have to hold off Curtis Glencross, who is trailing by only 0.09 points per 60 minutes despite the team's inability to generate shots while he's on the ice.

Anton Babchuk got some serious power play ice-time, and while his personal scoring rate is low, the team has done well whenever he's served with the man advantage. It's odd that they didn't use Clay Wilson with the man advantage this week.

A rare off-week for Miikka Kiprusoff, who went 1-for-3 in Quality Starts. Henrik Karlsson missed his 2nd Quality Start of the season by only a couple shots (or by only 62 seconds) in the OT loss to the Canucks – a bad break in what was certainly a quality start to the subjective eye.

Obviously next week's Black Box will be the final edition for this year, and I'd like to thank you in advance for following it throughout its inaugural season. We've obviously got some work to do this off-season to find ways to make this simpler and more accessible next year, and appreciate any suggestions you might leave for us in the comments.

Rob Vollman of www.HockeyAbstract.com is a regular feature writer on ESPN Insider, co-author of Hockey Prospectus 2010-11 and 2011-12, and regular contributor to NHL Numbers, Flames Nation and Arctic Ice Hockey. Innovator of Player Usage Charts, Quality Starts, GVS (Goals Versus Salary), the Snepsts Projection System, and known for work in League Equivalencies (NHLE). Twitter: @robvollmanNHL

Robert - Thanks for the great work - I have been enjoying it all year.

From this is seems like you have calculated some "conversion rate" for players from how many shots are taken w/ them on the ice vs. scoring chances? Has work also been done to see if there are players who have widely different conversion rates from scoring chances to goals?

It seems to me that the strict 'everything in the polygon is equal' may undervalue passers (like tanguay) who try to set up the 10-bell shots all the time.

I don't know if anyone's done any extensive looks into it, but it 'feels' accurate to me that a player's ability to create a larger number of scoring chances from a smaller number of shots could be repeatable to some extent (e.g. better players do tend to have slightly better on-ice shooting percentages). That would help explain why the correlation between Corsi/Fenwick and scoring chances is good, but not near-perfect.

Good article, Robert. I find I'm enjoying these more and more. The articles have always been good, but I think I've started warming to the stats as a fan.

A few things: "your team loses 5.5 points on the random OT/shoot-out chance"

I wouldn't categorize the shootout as random chance any more than so many other factors in the regulation game (faceoff, deflections, hits, passing completion, etc). It is a reflection of some player's specific skill set, however, that does not always translate to the larger part of the game, which is why some curious supporting players have average to above-average shootout percentages.

"Lee Stempniak had a solid season, and could arguably be a top-six forward on some of the league's weaker teams. On Calgary he's a useful and low-cost utility forward – let's see what kind of contract he'll get July 1st"

While I agree that Stempniak's value on July 1st will be an interesting one to watch, especially given the shallow free agent pool this summer, I would argue that he has been playing on one of the league's weaker teams. His lack of time as a top-six option with the Flames would likely be, in my mind, more the result of a veteran-laden squad with an abundance at his position and a tendency within the coaching staff to defer to certain players sometimes in spite of their lack of achievement.

An area in which Flames fans can find solace this season could be special teams. The NHL has them ranked 11th on the powerplay and 9th on the penalty kill. For a team of their standing and with their noted offensive difficulties, success for this team next season will need to begin and end with their special teams.

I know the timeonice.com data presentation may make this prohibitively difficult, but a week to week + overall on the year for both the OzQoc and possession numbers (at least at EV) would be useful in understanding changes over time.

For example, this would help us trace the moment that Iginla fell back to second toughest comp, which the total year data lags behind quite a bit.

"I wouldn't categorize the shootout as random chance any more than so many other factors in the regulation game (faceoff, deflections, hits, passing completion, etc). It is a reflection of some player's specific skill set, however, that does not always translate to the larger part of the game, which is why some curious supporting players have average to above-average shootout percentages"

I don't necessarily agree with you Rex. I'm of the opinion that the shootout is, above all, a game of chance. Are there teams and players that do well in the shootout. Sure, the shootout does have a small part that is skill and talent based. However, how do you explain guys like Alex Tanguay and Olli Jokinen who had good success in the shootout last year but have been bad this year? Last year the Flames were 9-7 in the shootout, the Kings were 10-2 , and the Bruins were 2-6. This year, the Flames are 3-9, the Kings are 6-8, and the Bruins are 8-3.